When is a house not a home? When it’s a Short Term Rental hotel in disguise.

Matthew Leslie

Most people don’t mind their neighbors having the occasional garage sale. They put up with the increased traffic and parking for a day or two because it’s only temporary. Sometimes it’s even fun. Have a garage sale every weekend, however, and neighbors may justifiably object to what is effectively a business on a front yard in the middle of the suburbs. Such is the case with what have become known as Short Term Rentals (STRs) of homes by their owners.

Before the internet age renting a house long term was generally a better strategy for a guaranteed income than risking hit and miss short term rentals, unless one owned a house near the beach or a cabin in the mountains, and even then, renting any time of the year was doubtful. But for people living near major tourist attractions in ever sunny Southern California, websites have made it possible to avoid vacancies in favor of consistent higher yielding week-long or even just weekend bookings. The result? De facto hotels next to homeowners or long term renters, who are not amused by partiers and early morning and/or late night arrivals and departures of short term guests with little interest in keeping the peace.

Homeowners also sensibly complain that the longterm effect of allowing short term rentals in their neighborhoods is an increasingly deleterious one that threatens the very idea of a neighborhood itself. You can’t call a revolving door of occupants next door neighbors, and without neighbors, you can’t have neighborhoods. Members of the Fullerton City Council who campaigned on “protecting neighborhoods” should remember their promises when they are inevitably asked to consider the practice of STRs in Fullerton.

Those who argue that banning short term rentals constitutes an infringement of the rights of property owners conveniently ignore the rights of those who own property near these home businesses. No property in a residential neighborhood should be allowed to operate a business that disrupts others, whether it be a car repair shop, chinchilla breeding farm, or a house turned into a hotel. Homeowners are perfectly free to rent their houses long term to others, just as they always have been—it isn’t as though there is a shortage of renters these days—but short term rentals cross a line from acceptable practice to outright commercial activity in neighborhoods designed for families. If people want to get into the hotel business, they should build or buy a hotel in an area zoned for it.

Fullerton’s planning staff’s recent attempt to create an ordinance governing short term rentals was picked apart by The Fullerton Planning Commission as unworkable and unfair, with some commissioners outright hostile to the idea of regulating the practice at all, calling it a solution in search of a problem. The commission ultimately asked for a rewritten ordinance to consider, coming soon, we understand. Planning staff and the The Fullerton Planning Commission/City Council can save everyone a lot of time by simply banning the practice altogether as the Anaheim City Council did on June 28 of this year.

This is actually a load of crap and I am surprised that someone would decide to speak for the entirety of a cities citizernship to make such broad sweeping generalizations that renting out ones home, their own private property, is a widespread nuisance. It isn’t and neither can it demonstrated as such beyond your opinion piece.

Further, in a time of considerable financial hardship, the advent of internet industries such as this offer the average individual the opportunity to earn some extra money without having to significantly change what they were doing in the first place. That is a revolutionary concept and one that will only gain further traction as long as our legislation further supports the dilution of the middle class.

It should also be offered that Anaheim’s motivation for banning the ‘short term rental’ practice is not completely with concern for the average citizen of their city. Anaheim is more or less ‘owned by Disney’ and likely saw this as something that could interrupt the monopoly currently enjoyed on overnight accommodations. If anything, Anaheim’s decision to ban short term rental’s should be viewed as a corporate machination over the autonomy of their citizens and condemned.

“Fullerton’s planning staff’s recent attempt to create an ordinance governing short term rentals was picked apart by The Fullerton Planning Commission as unworkable and unfair, with some commissioners outright hostile to the idea of regulating the practice at all, calling it a solution in search of a problem.”

Good on them for once. Micromanaging people’s lives over inflated concerns of nuisance issues is ridiculous and shouldn’t be tolerated.

Lisa, nowhere do I purport to “speak for the entirety of a cities (sic) citizenship.” I speak for myself. Your point about Disney, who are looking for massive hotel subsidies, is well taken. If you’re looking for things that dilute the middle class, please consider the effect of private (sometimes foreign) investors snapping up available houses for rentals, keeping prices too high for buyers who may want to just live there. And please, learn the difference between plurals and possessives.

I am involved in the STR issue in Anaheim. It is not true home sharing as purported by airbnb. The STRs in Anaheim are properties bought by investors who live elsewhere. They are not owner occupied where an owner rents out a couch. They are hotels in residential neighborhoods that have destroyed the quality of life for 1000s of residents. They overbuild for the neighborhood creating a10 bedroom mansion in a neighborhood of 3 -4 bedroom ranch style houses. Imagine 30 strangers moving in and out every 3 days all year long. It not only destroys neighborhoods. The STRs remove permanent residents thereby affecting school districts ( lack of children), voting areas, census tracts , etc. They bring disaster.

I believe that ST renting, is in fact a business and does not belong in the neighborhood as it affect the serenity of the adjacent neighbors and the tranquility that many seek in their place of residence. However it seems to be common practice beach & desert communities which most likely has persuaded many to not reside in vacation areas .
It seems to be a different age we live in as now anyone with a car can get into the taxi business with UBER or Lyft under the guise of “ride sharing”. Isn’t ride sharing for profit acutally a business that should require a business licence and stricter regulation as the taxi industry is subject too?This practice has many good aspects however, like more drunk drivers off the road because of cheap transportation. But the downs are that it has greatly affected the taxi industry and cut in on their legitimate business practice. ST renting taken to the extreme could hurt the local hotel industry such as in Anaheim near Disneyland and cut in on their profits.